Trump’s clean energy plan is anything but clean
The following is an excerpt from an editorial that ran in the Los Angeles Times
President Trump needs a new slogan for those red hats the White House sells, one that more closely reflects the true impact of his policies. Here’s a suggestion: MASA, for Make Air Sooty Again.
That’s what will happen if the president gets his way and manages to increase the amount of coal that U.S. power plants burn to make electricity. The administration’s announcement Tuesday that it intends to replace President Obama's Clean Power Plan with a new Affordable Clean Energy rule — quite the Orwellian appellation, given that coal is the dirtiest of energy sources — is another step down the road to air more laden with carbon, particulates and smogbreeding pollutants after decades of progress. The only silver lining in this particularly sooty cloud is that burning coal also is among the more expensive ways of generating power, and market forces independently are leading power companies to phase out existing coal-fired plants.
The new plan sets guidelines for states to follow in getting power plants to use existing technology to operate more efficiently and measuring success based on improvements in the heat rate, or amount of power generated by burning fuel. The plan also allows states to relax pollution controls that would extend the lives of existing coal-fired plants ... States would have three years to devise standards individualized to local utilities and subject to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approval. Environmental advocates say that’s an abdication of federal responsibility under the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon emissions. Even the EPA acknowledges the plan is likely to cause up to 1,400 more premature deaths a year from pollution-related ailments.
The president’s policies pose a dire threat to the health of Americans and weaken efforts to try to combat climate change and rid the air of particles damaging to human health. They must be opposed both in the courts and at the ballot box.